Customer Reviews

Swimming With Maya: A Mother's Story (Capital Discovery)

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In one respect, "Swimming" is about organ donation, but that feature of the story would not be as meaningful without all of the back story of the people involved, particularly the mother and daughter at the heart of the story, and especially Ms. Vincent. The back story is related with such searing honesty and absence of sentimentality, that I could not put the book down.

Eleanor Vincent leaves no question in the reader's mind about WHO made that decision to donate her daughter's organs. It is a heroic gesture under any circumstances. But it also made human through the understanding we are given of the nature of the relationship between this mother and daughter, their history, and the place they had come to in their lives. I cried in several places, not because of the obvious sadness of the story, but because the writing unsettled with its "realness."

I came away from this book feeling that I had been allowed to take a long, moving look into the personal mythology of another human being, with its many radiances and confused shadings. Memoir always offers the possibility of that, but doesn't always deliver. Ms. Vincent delivers.

my mother was the recipient of maya's liver. without this wonderful woman's brave desicion i wouldn't have a mother today. i recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn how the desicion to donate organs can truly affect every aspect of numerous people's lives. thank you Mrs. Vincent.

A friend of mine told me about this book - I probably wouldn't have picked it up on my own, I'm more inclined toward the "Master and Commander" approach - and I loved it. It's a thoughtful, moving, un-put-downable memoir that says a lot about parenthood and the human spirit.

I was very disappointed with the book. While the subject of Maya's donation was slightly covered, the author spent the majority of the book describing her various problems with relationships from her family of origin through her various husbands and boyfriends and the guilt she felt in her parenting of both Maya and Maya's younger half-sister. Her treatment of donation was sparse at best, focusing more on her own less-than-comfortable relationship with one of the recipients and her various speaking engagements. As the parent of a child who was also, at the age of 17 a donor, I found myself saddened that more attention wasn't paid to Maya's story and legacy and less to the writer's need to describe her conversations with her therapist. A wonderful opportunity to educate and encourage others about the gifts of donation - for both donor families and donor recipients - was missed.

This is an amazing book about a topic that I normally would not want to read about ---the loss of a child. But Vincent's writing is so compelling that the extraordinary circumstances are made not only real, but riveting.

This compelling book will touch every mother's heart. Eleanor Vincent's biographical novel, Swimming with Maya, sweeps the reader beyond trauma--to the drama of self discovery. Ms. Vincent forges her own balance from the crucible of a parent's most devastating and most joyful experiences. She shows us that meaning can be mined from shocking loss. Her book kindles the conviction that love can heal. I couldn't put it down.

At times this book was hard to read..the author takes us back to her daughter's horseback riding accident--as I read about it I felt like I was there with her daughter when it happend. A good read for anyone that is 'letting there child go' in terms of growing up as well as 'letting their child go' in terms of 'pulling the plug' An important memoir to read.

I picked up this book because the picture on the cover looks like my own daughter. When I read the back notes and learned that she was dead, I quickly put it back down. I didn't want to read about Eleanor Vincent's devastating loss. For some reason, though, I felt compelled to try to comprehend her experience.

What I found was indeed distressing, but inspirational at the same time. The book is in many ways a postmortem tribute to Vincent's daughter and an exploration of the healing effects of organ donation. Taken in its entirety, however, this book is really about a journey through the process of healing from a lifetime of psychological traumas. The extreme grief over her daughter's sudden death and the struggle to cope with it lead Vincent down buried paths of pain going all the way back to her childhood. She emerges transformed. She lost her daughter, but therein found herself, and we can't help but applaud her success.

My Aunt Ellie sent me a copy of the book when it was finished, that was April of 2004. I finally finished just yesterday July 12th,2005. I never anticipated that it would describe in detail the harrowing wait in that hospital for those 4 days that we all endured. I had to put the book down for the year to regain the strength to read on.
Being extremely close with Maya and having her be a huge part of my childhood, I thought there would be more about Maya's life as part of "Dan's" family. "Dan" is my Uncle, Maya's step-father and Maya was as connected to us as an actual blood relative of our family.
Although this is much more of a biography rather then letting people really grasp who Maya was, it is a good book.

I loved this book. Keep a box of tissues handy. Well written and riveting, this book gets too close in describing the tragic loss of a child.

Kudos to Ms. Vincent